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SciCourt digs into social theories as they begin polarization cases

 

Woman working from home on her bed

After weeks of preliminary research and discussion, the Spring 2021 cohort of students in Science Court are beginning to prepare the materials they will use in their end-of-semester arguments to the Science Court jury about fighting polarization in American society.

To help students better understand some of the psychological science related to mandatory service, U of M graduate student and Science Court advisor Cory Fleck presented to the group on Tuesday about social contact theory. This field of research suggests that when people are brought together to work on a task they can all contribute to with equal status, prejudice between group members can decline while respect for other members can increase. 

Fleck said he is excited to see how the students are able to utilize contact theory in their case preparation. He said he thinks it will provide a foundation for research on mandatory service and whether there might be limits to what contact can achieve. 

2021 Science Court Case Selection Results

Drum roll please... The results for the 2021 Science Court case are:

To fight polarization and recreate a common American identity, a mandatory national service should be adopted

We tallied the votes separately for students, staff and audience and all three groups ranked mandatory service as their top choice. Fifty people ranked Mandatory Service as their first pick for Science Court 2021. In second place, was Regenerative Agriculture, with 36 people ranking it as their first pick.

 

Table showing the voting results for the 2021 Science Court case.

The exact wording of the case statement may change somewhat as the case is refined, but the focus will remain on strategies for reducing polarization in American society. The pro side will argue for a strategy centered on civil and military national service. The con team will argue for a different approach, still to be determined, for reducing polarization on a grand scale. The jury will decide.

The Final Verdict!

And the verdict is.... 10-5 to the Pro Team! After 3 hours of deliberation on Sunday the jury delivered their final verdict just a few minutes ago.  It was a great semester full of discussion, debate, and a lot of research! We would like to thank you all for following along, but we would also like to remind you to stick around. There is still another Podcast and a Documentary about the trial on the way! Not to mention, we will be back next fall for another edition of SciCourt. Personally, as the communications team, we would like to thank all the Jury and the audience for taking time out of their weekend and coming down to Hamline University. We would like to thank the Legal, Science, and Programming Team for all the hard work they put in this semester. Finally, we would like to thank the professors for dedicating a lot of time and effort to making this class a success. Thank you again for following along, don't forget to check back soon for our final podcast and documentary!

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Thank You For Tuning In!

And that's a wrap on our Fall 2019 Science Court Trial!  Thank you to Hamline University for hosting our trial in a beautful court room style classroom.  Thank you also to our amazing jury members. Without your time and dedication, we would not have been able to accomplish what we did here today. Thank you to everyone who joined us in the audience both in person and online via Facebook live.  We hope that you enjoyed learning more about all of the research our students have done throughout this semester.  Today, proves that hardwork really does pay off!  Finally, thank you to our incredible instructors Ellad Tadmor, Lauren Clatch, Scott Libin, and Collin Tierney as well as our honorable Judge Bill McGinnis for all of the advice, the hardwork, and the time that they all put into this class as well. Tomorrow, our jury will deliberate on their opinions of how things went today and what was said by the science and legal teams.  On Tuesday evening, our jury will deliver their final verdict, the moment we've all been very excited for.  Stay tuned to see what they decide and if nuclear power truly is our future! 

Dams Kill People Too!

Nuclear energy has a pretty bad reputation- radioactive materials, nuclear meltdowns- most people don't really trust the safety of nuclear power plants.  Most people might just be unfairly biased against nuclear power, and we'll discuss it in the latest podcast about the health and safety of nuclear engineering. 

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Evidence Challenge: An Update from our Programming Team

So you might be curious as to what actually happened at our Evidence Challenge a couple of weeks ago?  What went down? Who argued what?  What did Judge Bill McGinnis decide as to what research the science and legal teams could use as evidence and what they must throw out of the pool?  Watch this explainer video made by our Programming Team member Grace O'Neil to see for yourself!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUDW-LXHNRA&feature=youtu.be